This was a new thing, at least in America, and Day may be called the originator of our illustrated periodicals as well as of our penny papers. His right-hand men in the editing of Brother Jonathan were Nathaniel P. Willis, the poet, and Horatio H. Weld, who was first a printer, next an editor, and at last a minister.
Day sold Brother Jonathan for a dollar a year. When the paper famine hit the publishing business in 1862, he suspended his publication and retired from business. He was well off, and he spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in ease at his New York home. He died on December 21, 1889. His son Benjamin was the inventor of the Ben Day process used in making engravings.
Day always watched the fortunes of the Sun with interest, but he did not believe that his immediate successors ran it just the right way. When the paper passed into the hands of Charles A. Dana, in 1868, Day—then not yet threescore—said:
“He’ll make a newspaper of it!”
And it was then he added that the silliest thing he himself ever did was to sell the Sun.
CHAPTER VI
MOSES Y. BEACH’S ERA OF HUSTLE
“The Sun” Uses Albany Steamboats, Horse Expresses, Trotting Teams, Pigeons, and the Telegraph to Get News.—Poe’s Famous Balloon Hoax and the Case of Mary Rogers.
The second owner of the Sun, Moses Yale Beach, was, like Ben Day, a Yankee. He was born in the old Connecticut town of Wallingford on January 7, 1800. He had a little education in the common schools, but showed more interest in mechanics than in books. When he was fourteen he was bound out to a cabinet-maker in Hartford. His skill was so fine that he saw the needlessness of serving the customary seven years, and his industry so great that he was able, by doing extra work in odd times, to get together enough money to buy his freedom from his master. He set up a cabinet-shop of his own at Northampton, Massachusetts.
When Beach was twenty, he made the acquaintance of Miss Nancy Day, of Springfield, the sister of Benjamin was the inventor of the Ben Day process used in Day were married in 1821, and as the business at Northampton was not prospering, they settled down in Springfield.